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Understanding Meditation

Meditation is one of the four fundamental components of Qigong along with movement/posture, self-massage, and breathing. Qigong (and it's most popular moving form, Tai Chi) is an ancient practice in a new category of exercise called "moving meditation". Meditation in combination with breathing and slow, gentle movements (although there are many forms of Qigong that do not involve movement) affects humans physically and psychologically through relaxation techniques which reduce stress through modulation of the autonomic nervous system. The practice has a proven effect upon quality of life, self-esteem, relationships, the ability to recognize and handle stress, pain relief, blood pressure, cardiovascular health, and more.

Qigong is moving meditation. "Moving" means either physical movement or movement of energy internally, even if no musculo-skeletal movement is occurring. The integration of interoception, proprioception, and mindfulness is a key component of the practice. You learn to create moments of peace within activity. All of this comes on a foundation of breathing.

Mindfulness is both a type of meditation and a key component of Qigong. Mindfulness can be defined as presence, or moment to moment awareness. Paying attention to the present moment as life unfolds moment to moment is called "non-doing", or "being". The practice of being is an attitude (i.e. an intention) to be in the present moment on purpose. The attitude that is brought to the meditation will determine its long-term value and whether it leads to a changed state of mind.

Meditation in general and mindfulness in particular are extremely valuable practices for health. However, they are necessary but not sufficient. The profound power of Qigong comes from its incorporation of breathing (not all meditation or mindfulness includes any particular breathing discipline) and movement.

Committment to practice requires effort and consistency over time in order to achieve best results. Note that meditation is a part of any Qigong practice session, but the most enduring benefit is obtained by integrating Qigong into your daily life.

Meditation is increasingly being used in clinical situations for a range of conditions, and there is a growing scientific evidence base of its benefits. Qigong meditation and mindfulness training cultivates body awareness and promotes self-management of illness.

Study quantifies changes in stress after meditation. "Through a new method of processing HRV [Heart Rate Variability] time series data, the researchers developed a way to measure the change in the level of stress provided by meditation. This measure assigns a number to the level of variability of heartbeat interval time series before and during meditation. This number indicates precisely how much stress is alleviated by control of the heart-brain coupling through meditation...Historically, one purpose of meditation has been to reduce stress, however, the Army's long-term goal is to use it to mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. West said the potential for this to succeed has been dramatically increased with the new ability to quantify the degree of effectiveness in stress reduction using different meditation techniques."

The neurobiology of focus and distraction: The case for incorporating mindfulness into leadership. Two main neural circuits are contrasted: the mind-wandering default mode circuit and the attentional central executive system. These two systems act in an antagonistic pairing, where the degree of toggling between systems is associated with the degree a person can sustain focus and filter out unwarranted distractions. Excessive multitasking appears to compromise the neural switch of these two systems, thereby diminishing our focus and concentration. In contrast, mindfulness practice is shown to have the opposite effect by enhancing the neural switch, thereby enhancing leadership focus that can lead to greater flexibility, foresight, regulation, and creativity. To conclude, leaders who are excessively distracted, such as with multitasking, may be compromising cognitive brain functioning, while engaging in mindfulness may replenish the brain and thereby enhance leaders' ability to sustain focus and tap into higher cognitive functioning.

Why Doing Nothing Is the Key to Happiness. Attention and focus are hard to come by. Starbucks built a $13 billion business because we need help paying attention. Psychiatrists increasingly diagnose "adult attention deficit disorder" and prescribe Ritalin for grownups who can't focus or pay attention. But are coffee and prescription speed the answers to our modern distractions? What matters most in life is the quality of our experience, the ability to be awake to what is real and true in our lives, for the difficult and the happy times, to be awake to each person we touch, to our own experience, to this very moment, to the simple sweet and alive gifts of a smile, a kind deed, the breeze on our skin, the firefly flickering the early summer night. The point of meditation, of doing nothing, is not an end in itself but a way to calm the mind, to see the true nature of things, and reduce the impact of suffering -- while increasing love, kindness, wisdom, fearlessness and sympathy. From that stillness, your life becomes more rich, your actions more clear, your words more direct and powerful and your capacity to be fully engaged in life enhanced. It is not a retreat from life, but a way to go fully into it and cultivate your own power and happiness. The article could be titled: 'Why Doing Qigong Is the Key to Happiness".

Meditation helps patients with medically unexplained symptoms. Awareness and acceptance of painful symptoms and emotions are key factors in the process of change in patients with persistent medically unexplained symptoms. Change of unhelpful behavioral patterns and increased self-care and self-compassion can also result from this process.

Study Revealed That Vajrayana Meditation Techniques Associated with Tibetan Buddhism Can Enhance Brain Performance. Contrary to popular belief, not all meditation techniques produce similar effects of body and mind. Indeed, a recent study by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has demonstrated for the first time that different types of Buddhist meditation – namely the Vajrayana and Theravada styles of meditation - elicit qualitatively different influences on human physiology and behaviour, producing arousal and relaxation responses respectively.

The Effects of Stress and Meditation on the Immune System, Human Microbiota, and Epigenetics. Psychological stress typically triggers a fight-or-flight response, prompting corticotropin-releasing hormone and catecholamine production in various parts of the body, which ultimately disturbs the microbiota. In the absence of stress, a healthy microbiota produces short-chain fatty acids that exert anti-inflammatory and antitumor effects. During stress, an altered gut microbial population affects the regulation of neurotransmitters mediated by the microbiome and gut barrier function. Meditation helps regulate the stress response, thereby suppressing chronic inflammation states and maintaining a healthy gut-barrier function. The current research team recommends the integration of meditation into conventional health care and wellness models. More information on Qigong and the Microbiome: Food Is Medicine.

Is Mindful Reflective Practice the way forward to reduce medication errors? Considering the benefits of mindfulness, the authors suggest that healthcare professionals should be encouraged to develop their practice of mindfulness. This would not only be beneficial in relieving stress, increasing attention levels and awareness, but it is believed that the integration of mindfulness and reflective practice in a 'Mindful Reflective Practice' could minimise some of the individual factors that lead to medication errors.

Breathing In vs. Spacing Out. Are mindfulness and creativity mutually exclusive? Implicit learning underlies all sorts of acquired skills and habits, but it occurs without conscious awareness. The trick is knowing when mindfulness is called for and when it's not. We know that being mindful is really good for a lot of explicitly cognitive functions. But it might not be so useful when you want to form new habits.

Spiritual Qigong includes integrating meditation nto one's life 24x7. Through meditation the relationship between you and your life changes and deepens. You gain new insight and perceptions on living your life. However, mediation is not something to be practiced in ascetic isolation from the rest of your daily routine. In fact it is the integration of moving meditation practices such as Qigong into the fabric of daily life that most directly result in significant changes and improvements in health and wellbeing.

7 Myths of Meditation. Deepak Chopra debunks some of the more common myths surrounding the practice of meditation.

American Mindfulness Research Association. Mindfulness is a quality of human consciousness characterized by an accepting awareness of and enhanced attention to the constant stream of lived experience. Being mindful increases engagement with the present moment and allows for a clearer understanding of how thoughts and emotions can impact our health and quality of life. Mindfulness can be cultivated through meditation practice. The AMRA Mindfulness Research Guide is a comprehensive electronic resource and publication database that provides information to researchers, practitioners, and the general public on mindfulness.

Buddhism and the Blues - Buddhist psychology's core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners. To most people Buddhism is an ancient Eastern religion, although a very special one. It has no god, it has no central creed or dogma and its primary goal is the expansion of consciousness, or awareness. But to the Dalai Lama, it's a highly refined tradition, perfected over the course of 2,500 years, of analyzing and investigating the inner world of the mind in order to transform mental states and promote happiness. "Whether you are a believer or not in the faith," the Dalai Lama told a conference of Buddhists and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can use its time-honored techniques to voluntarily control your emotional state.

Silencing the Monkey Mind: For those of us engaged in any form of meditative efforts, such as bio energy, traditional chi gung, or even Zen meditations, each of us can personally attest to the brain’s “wandering” tendencies. Long ago, Buddhist monks created an analogy describing the wandering activity of the brain akin to a “chattering monkey”.

RECENT FINDINGS: Recent meta-analyses and individual studies demonstrated common brain effects for attention-based meditative practices and active-based meditations in areas involved in reward processing and learning, attention and memory, awareness and sensory integration, and self-referential processing and emotional control, while deactivation was seen in the amygdala, an area implicated in emotion processing. Unique effects for mindfulness practices were found in brain regions involved in body awareness, attention, and the integration of emotion and sensory processing. Effects specific to active-based meditations appeared in brain areas involved in self-control, social cognition, language, speech, tactile stimulation, sensorimotor integration, and motor function.

SUMMARY:

This review suggests that mind-body practices can target different brain systems that are involved in the regulation of attention, emotional control, mood, and executive cognition that can be used to treat or prevent mood and cognitive disorders of aging, such as depression and caregiver stress, or serve as "brain fitness" exercise. Benefits may include improving brain functional connectivity in brain systems that generally degenerate with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and other aging-related diseases.

A Definition and Overview of the Benefits of Qigong Meditation

Meditation can be defined to include any of a family of practices in which the practitioner trains an individual to consciously calm his/her mind in order to realize some benefit or achieve inner peace or harmony. Despite lack of consensus in the scientific literature on a definition of meditation, most researchers agree that meditation implies a form of mental training that requires either stilling or emptying the mind, and its goal is to achieve a state of “detached observation” or “restful alertness.”[ 7 ] The foundation of meditation practice is rooted in the principles of “self-observation of immediate psychic activity, training one’s level of awareness, and cultivating an attitude of acceptance of process rather than content.”[ 6 ]

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), all forms of meditation that are essentially mind-body integrative exercises are categorized as “qigong”. Qigong is defined as “the skill of mind–body exercises that integrate body, breath, and mind adjustments into one,”[ 8 ] which addresses both psychological and physiological aspects of health. Although qigong has both dynamic (movement) and static forms, the meditative state—body, breath, and mind into one—is common among all of them. Given a lack of consensus in Western psychology about the definition of meditation and exactly what techniques it includes, in this review we use the established definition of meditative therapies in Chinese medicine. Specifically, we include all mind–body exercises, both dynamic (moving) form and static (still) form, which aim to integrate breath–body–mind adjustments into one. As a result, this includes all meditations, yoga, mindfulness training, Transcendental Meditation (TM), qigong, tai chi (or Taiji), and even guided imagery, as guided imagery is an ancient technique in meditation practice.[ 8] More...

Mayo Clinic Recommends Meditation

Qigong Meditation and Interoception

Spinal FMRI of interoceptive attention/awareness in experts and novices. Interoception is the sense of the physiological condition of the body derived from sensitivity to stimuli arising from within the body and external to it. In other words, interoceptive attention/awareness (IAA) depends upon the evaluation of sensory input. Interoception is fundamental to Qigong practice. These research results showed that neural activity in the spine increased in experts when they practiced IAA and that this increase was significantly larger for experts versus novices in each of the sessions. The significant effects of IAA and expertise on spinal neural activity are consistent with and elaborate on previous reports showing similar effects on cerebral neural activity. As the spinal cord directly innervates body parts, IAA has an instantaneous and beneficial effect on the physical body after extended training. This research confirms how some main benefits of Qigong practice are derived, especially due to the fact that the IAA in this research was combined with constant deep breathing.

Alan Watts Teaches the Art of Meditation

"The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality. And the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, and talk about it, and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds...the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality. Just as we confuse money with actual wealth."Alan Watts.

The Incorporation of Meditation into Western Medical Practice

The Clinical Use of Meditation

Herbert Benson and Jon Kabat-Zinn are the two people have been most instrumental in the introduction and acceptance of meditation into basic western medical practice. Dr. Herbert Benson was the first to research and publicize the benefits of meditation in his ground-breaking book The Relaxation Response published in 1975. Benson's message was simple and straightforward. He argued that meditation could counter physiological and psychological adjustments to change which cause stress and accompanying illness. Benson recommended a meditation practice consisting of four basic elements -- a quiet environment, a mental object to dwell on, emptying all thoughts and distractions from one's mind, and a comfortable position. He called the result of such a practice the "relaxation response" -- decreases in heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and breathing rate. Although Benson's original relaxation response included meditation, unlike Qigong, it did not include movement or breathing practices.

Relaxation Response: Dr. Herbert Benson Teaches You The Basics

From Buddhist and Taoist meditation practices which originated in China and became Zen Bhuddism in Japan, Jon Kabat-Zinn developed a secualr form of meditation he called "mindfulness-based" and got it accepted and integrated into mainstream western medical practice through proven clinical results.

Q&A: Jon Kabat-Zinn Talks About Bringing Mindfulness Meditation to Medicine. Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-trained molecular biologist, began meditating in 1966, when the practice was primarily the province of hippies and gurus, not scientists. Now, thanks in large part to his efforts, it has become mainstream medicine. Dozens of studies have since shown the benefits of what he termed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in treating cardiovascular disease, depression, addictions, chronic pain and many other conditions.

Seven Fundamentals of Mindfulness

The essence of mindfulness practice is making the following seven key attitudes and intentions the foundation for your mind's moment to moment experience of life. These are fundamental to Qigong as well as any mindfulness-based meditation.

1. Non-judging: seeing experience as it is without adding interpretation or judgement.

2. Patience: understanding that change and understanding develops in its own time

3. Beginners mind: being curious about the current situation, as if you have never experienced anything like it before, rather than viewing it through a fog of preconceptions.

4. Trust: developing faith in the validity of your own body sensations, thoughts, emotions and intuition

5. Non-striving: allowing experience to be the way it is without trying to change it.

6. Acceptance: being open and willing to see things as they actually are in the present moment

7. Letting go: developing a sense of non-attachment to experience, letting thoughts and emotions arise and pass by without getting entangled in them.

Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention. “This isn’t the old San Francisco hippie fluff,” said Mr. Tan, who started the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute as an extracurricular program in 2007. More than a thousand Googlers have gone through the course, which uses scientific research and the profit motive to entice coders and programmers to be here now. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies verify the benefits of mindfulness training, and Mr. Tan appeared familiar with all of them. Meditation thickens the brain’s cortex, it lowers blood pressure, it can heal psoriasis and “it can help you get a promotion,” he said.

Mindfulness Meditation: How It Works In The Brain. Mindfulness may be so successful in helping with a range of conditions, from depression to pain, by working as a sort of "volume knob" for sensations, according to a new review of studies from Brown University researchers. In their paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the researchers proposed that mindfulness meditation works by enabling a person to have better control over brain processing of pain and emotions. Specifically, the researchers postulate that mindfulness meditation plays a role in the controlling of cortical alpha rhythms, which have been shown in brain imaging studies to play a role in what senses our bodies and minds pay attention to.

Clinical integration of Mindfulness-based interventions. This is an excellent review of mindfulness research published during the last five years. Over 500 scientific articles on mindfulness were published in 2012. This was more than the total number of mindfulness articles published between 1980 and 2000. A recent survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that 75% of general practitioners in the UK believe that mindfulness is beneficial for patients with mental health problems. Indeed, recent findings indicate that Mindfulness-based interventions may be effective treatments for a broad range of psychological disorders and somatic illnesses.

ABC World News - Meditation

A brief report on the benefits of meditation, now being used in corporations, the military, schools, and increasingly by patients on the recommendation of their doctors.

How Meditation Changes Your Brain -- and Your Life

When neuroscientists tested expert meditators, they discovered something surprising: The effect of Buddhist meditation isn’t just momentary; it can alter deep-seated traits in our brain patterns and character. More.

Mapping the Mind: How You Use Your Brain Changes It Physically

Lazar is one of several researchers who have demonstrated that certain areas of the brain actually grow larger as the result of an ongoing meditation practice. All these areas of the brain are associated with sensory experience, working memory and executive decision making.

“It’s well documented that our cortex shrinks as we get older. It’s harder to figure things out and remember things,” Lazar explains. “But in this one region of the prefrontal cortex, 50-year-old meditators had the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds.” More.

Do Qigong Meditation Now

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Research on Meditation

Stress is a physical and emotional reaction that people experience as they encounter changes in life. Occasional stress is a normal coping mechanism. However, long-term stress may contribute to or worsen a range of health problems including digestive disorders, headaches, sleep disorders, and other symptoms. Stress may worsen asthma and has been linked to depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.

Some people use various relaxation techniques to induce the relaxation response, which helps release tension and may counteract the ill effects of stress. Relaxation techniques often combine breathing exercises and focused attention to calm the mind and the body. Some examples of relaxation response techniques are:

Meditation for Health: NCCAM Clinical Digest for Health Professionals. November 2014. This issue of the digest summarizes current scientific evidence about meditation for health conditions, including cancer symptoms and treatment side effects, high blood pressure, menopausal symptoms, anxiety disorders, smoking cessation, and ADHD. NCCAM Clinical Digest is a service of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, NIH, DHHS. NCCAM Clinical Digest, a monthly e-newsletter, offers evidence-based information on complementary health approaches, including scientific literature searches, summaries of NCCAM-funded research, fact sheets for patients, and more. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is dedicated to exploring complementary health products and practices in the context of rigorous science, training complementary health researchers, and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) research blogHighlights New Research on Meditation. NCCAM is planning a series of blog posts to highlight some exciting work from its research portfolio. Currently one intriguing area is the effect of meditation on the brain. Meditation can be viewed as a kind of ‘mental exercise.’ New insights are coming from incorporation of brain-imaging studies into meditation research. In particular, studies suggest that meditation is accompanied by changes in activation of select regions in the brain, particularly the amygdala, a region associated with processing of emotion. A new NCCIH study goes further and concludes that the changes in brain function in the amygdala seen during meditation are persistent, enduring even outside meditation sessions. Research spotlight:Meditation Training Program Shows Brain Effects Even Outside a Meditative State.

Qigong for Meditators

Wise qigong practice can reset and balance the nervous system by releasing tension, and softening and lengthening the breath through mindful action. Thus qigong is really a way to offer metta (lovingkindness) and compassion toward ourselves.

I teach a form of qigong for meditators that I call Radiant Heart qigong. The bene ts of Radiant Heart qigong practice for meditators are many. To begin with, the forms are acces- sible to almost every tness level and can (indeed, should) be modi ed to t each individual’s needs. Qigong may be done while standing, sitting, walking, and even lying down.

The ease of performing qigong belies the transformative power it offers. It is precisely this ease that allows its mindful practice to open the gateway to the direct experience of be- ing—a quality that I call “presence awareness,” which can refer both to an action and to a state of being. As an action, “presence awareness” is to bring the fullness of our attention to an object—the breath, for example, or any feature of the physical or energetic body, the mind, or the emotions. When we rest in presence awareness, we embody a kind of poise of being in which we are present to our interconnectedness with all of life, and our consciousness can rest in its own pristine and unobscured nature. Qigong uni es the domains of our human being—spirit, mind, and body. More.

In 2013, the New York Times declared that mindfulness was "having a moment" (pun intended), and just a few months later, a January 2014 TIME cover story announced that a "Mindful Revolution" was underway, challenging the stressed-out, tech-addicted American status quo. This month, Scientific American has featured meditation on its November 2014 cover, representing another major step toward a meeting of the minds between ancient Eastern wisdom and Western science.

"We will examine here what happens in the brain during three common types of meditation developed through Buddhism and now practiced in secular programs in hospitals and schools throughout the world. The first one, focused-attention meditation, aims to tame and center the mind in the present moment while developing the capacity to remain vigilant to distractions. The second one, mindfulness, or open-monitoring meditation, tries to cultivate a less emotionally reactive awareness to emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment to prevent them from spiraling out of control and creating mental distress. In mindfulness, the meditator remains attentive, moment by moment, to any experience without focusing on anything specific. Finally, another type of practice is known in Buddhist tradition as compassion and loving kindness and fosters an altruistic perspective toward others."

Scientific American November 2014 cover story

What is Mindfulness

Living in the moment -- also called mindfulness -- is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.

New Study Links Mindfulness, Brain Changes, and Pain Sensitivity

People who are naturally more mindful (e.g. people who regularly practice Qigong) report less pain and show lower activation of a specific region of the brain in response to an unpleasant heat stimulus, according to a new study supported by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). The study, conducted by researchers from Wake Forest University and collaborating institutions, was published in the journal Pain. More.

This is why meditation is so good for you (and why Prince Harry does it everyday)

By practicing meditation we play an active role in changing our brains for the better, no different from honing our biceps in the gym. Stanford University’s Dr Fred Luskin found that we have over 60,000 thoughts a day, of which 90% are repetitive. We are either lurching into the future, or leaning in the past. Yet after a mindfulness programme, Harvard Business Review found that meditators were 28% less stressed with 20% better sleep.... This is due to greater clarity, decisiveness and focus. Read article.

Stress Magement, Mindfulness, and the Practice of Qigong

"The concept of mindfulness, which originates from practices of Buddhism, is defined as a focused awareness of one’s experience, and purposeful and nonjudgmental focus on the present moment." Once the focus on the present is obtained, one can apply that awareness to practice breathing meditation, interoception, and gentle movement and physical exercises, all of which are fundamental to the Art and practice of Qigong. "With practice, individuals learn to process emotions, thoughts, and sensations as they arise. Individuals learn to modify their reflexive conditioning from automatically reacting or worrying about the future to a more adaptive, measured response with greater awareness of the present moment."

Lama Sakyong Mipham on Meditation

Mipham gives a succinct introduction to the fundamental concepts of meditation with some deep insights from his book Turning the Mind Into an Ally. Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind trains us to be undistracted, focused, and fully present in our lives.

Mindfulness is what we use to hold our minds to any object and awareness is the intelligence that tells us what we're doing

Sakyong Mipham explains some basics of meditation. Qigong meditation is practiced many ways, including sitting as in his example, or more commonly, while moving. Many people have a problem with sitting still very long, and that is why they try Qigong's moving meditation forms, such as Tai Chi. Also, meditation in Qigong focuses most on mindfulness and awareness as opposed to meditation on specific notions such as compassion.

What is the Difference Between Qigong and Mindfulness-based Meditation

A Personal Reflection on the Relationship Between Tai Chi Qigong and Mindfulness Meditation. There are some subtle differences between Qiqong, Tai Chi, and Mindfulness-based meditation. However, they all seek the truth of the present moment, seeing it clearly without pre-conceived ideas and habitual judgements, you can promote the healing of both physical and mental aspects of the self. This in turn supports the sustained practice required to achieve spiritual insight and personal transformation.

The Philosophy of Mindfulness

Becoming Conscious: The Science of Mindfulness

Many of us go through our daily lives on autopilot, not fully aware of our conscious experiences. In a discussion moderated by Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Amishi Jha and clinical mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn explore the role of consciousness in mental and physical health, how we can train our minds to be more flexible and adaptable, and cutting-edge neuroscience findings about the transformation of consciousness through mindfulness and contemplative practice. Intelligent, passionate people talking about neuroplasticity and meditation.

Is Mindfulness a Religion? The fact that so many of our traditions -- religious and secular, spiritual and philosophical -- come back to these fundamental practices of compassion and awareness suggests that mindfulness is simply part of the human experience.

More Mindfulness, Less Meditation. Don't expect more than meditation can deliver. In the modern world, meditation is far more effective as a technique of self-management than as a means of personal transformation, much less enlightenment. There is a difference between mindfulness meditation and simple mindfulness. The latter isn’t a practice separate from everyday life. Mindfulness just means becoming more conscious of what you’re feeling, more intentional about your behaviors and more attentive to your impact on others. The real challenge isn’t what we’re able to do with our eyes closed. It’s to be more self-aware in the crucible of our everyday lives, and to behave better as a result. That’s mindfulness in action.

Recognizing that the subconscious mind has the most control over what we do (i.e. our behavior) is a prime focus of mindfulness.

Ellen Langer: Mindfulness over matter

Ellen Langer is an artist and Harvard psychology professor who authored 11 books on the illusion of control, perceived control, successful aging and decision-making. "We have many, many studies that suggest that the limits we assume are real are artificial, and that we don't have to accept them at all."

Lifestyle, Resources

Information and Meditation -- Improving attention in the digital-age. In the University of Washington Information and Contemplation class, participants scrutinize their use of technology: how much time they spend with it, how it affects their emotions, how it fragments their attention. They watch videos of themselves multitasking and write guidelines for improving their habits. They also practice meditation—during class—to sharpen their attention. Video 3:20.

Monk changes body temperature thorough Meditation. Attempts to understand advanced mediation will lead to better treatments for stress-related illnesses. "My hope," says Dr. Herbert Benson, "is that self-care will stand equal with medical drugs, surgery, and other therapies that are now used to alleviate mental and physical suffering. Along with nutrition and exercise, mind/body approaches can be part of self-care practices that could save millions of dollars annually in medical costs."

Mindfulness Research Guide. Mindfulness is a quality of human consciousness characterized by an accepting awareness of and enhanced attention to the constant stream of lived experience. Being mindful increases engagement with the present moment and allows for a clearer understanding of how thoughts and emotions can impact our health and quality of life. Mindfulness can be cultivated through meditation practice. Mindfulness Research Guide is a comprehensive electronic resource and publication database that provides information to researchers, practitioners, and the general public on mindfulness.

UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness

The UCSD Center for Mindfulness is a multi-faceted program of clinical care, professional training, education, research and outreach intended to further the practice and integration of mindfulness into all aspects of society. The Center offers a broad range of mindfulness-based programs and initiatives. The Center is a program of the UC San Diego Center for Integrative Medicine and Department of Psychiatry.

Mindfulness and Medicine at UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness

UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness Director Steve Hickman explains how the practice of mindfulness can alleviate the difficulties of life. He describes how stress can be alleviated with the systematic practice of living in the moment.

Meditation and Health

The three main principles of Qigong practice are the concentration of body movements, the breath and the mind. Qigong has both a dynamic (Yang) and stillness (Yin) component. Qigong can be referred to as a mindful or meditation practice. The term meditation refers to a variety of techniques or practices intended to focus or control attention. Most meditative techniques are rooted in Eastern religious or spiritual traditions and have been used by many different cultures throughout the world for thousands of years. Today, many people use meditation outside of its traditional religious or cultural settings to improve their health and wellness.

Researchers have been collecting data on meditation for many years and countless studies have shown that meditation has not only a mental but a physiological effect on the body. Many of the findings show that, among other benefits, meditation can help reverse heart disease, reduce pain and enhance the body's immune system. ...More